Left-wing populism in the UK: theory and practice
Luke March
Politics and International Relations
University of Edinburgh (l.march@ed.ac.uk)
Please do not cite, quote or distribute without the author’s permission
Abstract:
The vast majority of analysis has focussed on (radical) right-wing populism. European leftpopulism is still rarely discussed in depth. But a study of left-populism is relevant for several
reasons: first, it will contribute to the vigorous ongoing theoretical and conceptual debate about
what populism is as a phenomenon. Second, it will illuminate the discussion of the growing party
populism by incorporating a greater number of cases that can be compared with the ‘usual suspects’
on the right. Third, discussion of left-populism is very timely. The post-2007 economic depression
is arguably tailor-made for left-populists, both in Europe and wider afield.
The paper broadens and deepens the rudimentary literature on European left-populism by
comparing the nature of populism between two right-wing parties (the British National Party, BNP,
the UK Independence Party, UKIP) and two left-wing populist parties (the Scottish Socialist Party,
SSP and Respect), as well as comparing these radical parties with the mainstream UK Labour and
Conservative Parties. The right-wing parties are archetypal populist parties chosen as ‘control’
cases to analyse what is distinct about the left, whereas the mainstream parties act as ‘control’ cases
to focus on similarities and differences between parties of the right and left, and between populists
and the mainstream.
This paper develops a new form of qualitative content analysis to parse the nature of and
degree of parties’ populist appeal. The core argument is that populism is a ‘thin’ ideology that
cleaves to more developed ‘host’ ideologies, and therefore transforms its content according to the
nature of the host ideology. A second core understanding is that all parties (including the
mainstream) will have at least some elements of populism within their electoral appeal.
Nevertheless, left-wing populists are both less populist and more inclusionary than those of the
right.
Party populism is an undoubted growth industry in European political science. This profusion in
interest can be traced to real-world events, such as the perceived electoral rise of populist parties
and the (contested) thesis that populism has become integral to contemporary democratic politics to
the degree that there is a populist Zeitgeist.1
Nevertheless, the vast majority of such analysis has focussed on (radical) right-wing
populism. Yet, the stellar success of the Greek Syriza, burgeoning poll ratings for Podemos in Spain
and movements such as Occupy and 15-M have begun to confound Francis Fukuyama’s
contestation that there is no ‘Tea Party on the left’ leading a populist uprising against the political
establishment.2
However, despite a plethora of analyses remarking on (particularly) Greek and Spanish leftpopulism as a new phenomenon, there has long been a tacit acknowledgement that left-wing
populism is (in theory) possible.3 For example, Taggart has noted the ‘chameleonic’ nature of
populism, implying that populism can be combined with basically every ideology.4 Before the focus
on the new radical right, arguably the most successful European populists of recent decades were
the left-wing Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK) in the 1980s and early 1990s.5 There is
certainly a venerable literature focusing on the nature of left-wing populism as a distinct
phenomenon in Latin America.6 Nevertheless, most has little reference to populism in Europe.7
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
1
Cas Mudde, ‘The Populist Zeitgeist’, Government and Opposition 39, no. 4 (2004): 542–63; Margaret
Canovan, ‘Trust the People! Populism and the Two Faces of Democracy’, Political Studies 47, no. 1 (1999):
2–16; Benjamin Arditi, ‘Populism, Or, Politics at the Edges of Democracy’, Contemporary Politics 9, no. 1
(2003): 17–31.
2
Francis Fukuyama, ‘“Where Is the Uprising from the Left?”’, Spiegel Online, 1 February 2012,
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,812208,00.html.
3
E.g. Dan Hancox, ‘Why Ernesto Laclau Is the Intellectual Figurehead for Syriza and Podemos’, The
Guardian, 9 February 2015, http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/feb/09/ernesto-laclauintellectual-figurehead-syriza-podemos; Omer Tekdemir, ‘Is a Socialist EU Possible via Left-Wing Populist
Parties such as Syriza, Podemos and the HDP?’, openDemocracy, 20 February 2015,
https://www.opendemocracy.net/can-europe-make-it/omer-tekdemir/is-socialist-eu-possible-via-leftwingpopulist-parties-such-as-syri.
4
Paul Taggart, Populism, 1st ed. (Open University Press, 2000).
5
Christos Lyrintzis, ‘The Changing Party System: Stable Democracy, Contested “Modernisation”’, West
European Politics 28, no. 2 (2005): 242–59.
6
E.g. Jennifer N. Collins, ‘New Left Experiences in Bolivia and Ecuador and the Challenge to Theories of
Populism’, Journal of Latin American Studies 46, no. 1 (2014): 59–86; Maxwell A. Cameron, ‘Latin
America’s Left Turns: Beyond Good and Bad’, Third World Quarterly 30, no. 2 (2009): 331–48.
Over the last decade or so, comparative analyses increasingly acknowledged that left-wing
variants are an important (albeit comparatively minor) component of European populism.8 Most
limit themselves to acknowledging the existence of left-populism, but do not try evaluate it in
detail.9 A few analysts have acknowledged this increased importance by beginning to parse the
disctinctive elements of left-wing populism.10 Nevertheless, such work is still in its infancy – indepth, comparative accounts are still few.
The aim of this article is to develop this preliminary literature on left-wing populism. It aims
to provide breadth and depth, by providing a comparative account that focuses on what many
scholars mention implicitly if at all: the key similarities and differences between left and right-wing
populism. The study is relevant for several broader reasons: first, it will contribute to ongoing
theoretical and conceptual debates about what populism is as a phenomenon. Second, it will
illuminate the discussion of the growing party populism by incorporating a greater number of cases
that can be compared with the ‘usual suspects’ on the right. Third, discussion of left-populism
opens up the possibilities of wider comparisons, not least between Europe and contemporary Latin
America. Fourth, discussion of left-populism is very timely, with the socio-economic conditions
after the Great Recession finally beginning to prove a propitious hunting-ground for left-wing
populists. Finally, the rise of left-populists has broader significance, because whereas many scholars
have traditionally seen the success of populist parties in general as a sign of the ill-health of
representative democracy;11 conversely some argue that left-populists represent a democratic,
inclusionary impetus.12
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
7
For one exception see Cas Mudde and Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser, ‘Exclusionary vs. Inclusionary
Populism: Comparing Contemporary Europe and Latin America’, Government and Opposition 48, no. 02
(April 2013): 147–74.
8
Mudde, ‘The Populist Zeitgeist’; Daniele Albertazzi and Duncan McDonnell, eds., Twenty-First Century
Populism: The Spectre of Western European Democracy (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).
9
Matthijs Rooduijn and Teun Pauwels, ‘Measuring Populism: Comparing Two Methods of Content
Analysis’, West European Politics 34, no. 6 (2011): 1272–83; Stijn van Kessel, Populist Parties in Europe
(Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2015).
10
E.g. Luke March and Cas Mudde, ‘“What”s Left of the Radical Left? The European Radical Left after
1989: Decline and Mutation’, Comparative European Politics 3 (2005): 23–49; Luke March, ‘From
Vanguard of the Proletariat to Vox Populi: Left-Populism as a “Shadow” of Contemporary Socialism’, SAIS
Review 27, no. 1 (2007): 63–77; Luke March, Radical Left Parties in Contemporary Europe, (Routledge,
2011); Cas Mudde and Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser, eds., Populism in Europe and the Americas: Threat or
Corrective for Democracy?, (Cambridge University Press, 2012); Yannis Stavrakakis and Giorgos
Katsambekis, ‘Left-Wing Populism in the European Periphery: The Case of SYRIZA’, Journal of Political
Ideologies 19, no. 2 (2014): 119–42.
11
Margaret Canovan, ‘Taking Politics to the People: Populism as the Ideology of Democracy’, in
Democracies and the Populist Challenge, ed. Y. Mény and Y. Surel (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002), 25–42;
Accordingly this article compares the nature of populism between two populist
extreme/radical right parties (the British National Party, BNP, the UK Independence Party, UKIP)
and two populist radical left parties (the Scottish Socialist Party, SSP and Respect) as well as
comparing these radical parties with the mainstream UK Labour and Conservative Parties. The
BNP and UKIP are archetypal populist parties chosen as ‘control’ cases to highlight what is distinct
about the left, whereas the mainstream parties act as ‘control’ cases to focus on similarities and
differences between populists and the mainstream.
Why focus on the UK? There are practical and academic reasons. First, the method chosen
(qualitative content analysis) is labour-intensive and involves detailed attention on the sense of the
text; it is both more expedient and more accurate to test this technique on English-language sources
prior to applying it elsewhere. Second and more importantly, several studies have argued that
populism is prevalent in the British political mainstream.13 Some have even argued that the rhetoric
of public figures such as Ed Miliband, Russell Brand and Owen Jones indicates recent growth in
left-wing populism in Britain.14 The ensuing analysis can show whether this alleged left-populist
Zeitgeist finds any corroboration in UK party ideologies.
Accordingly, the questions in focus in this paper are the following:
o What are the key features of left-wing populism?
o How and why does strength and content of populism differ amongst different leftpopulist parties?
o What are the differences and similarities between left and right-wing populism?
o Do ‘mainstream’ left and right parties exhibit features of populism and to what extent do
more radical ‘populist’ parties differ from them?
The article proceeds as follows: first, I briefly set out my definition of populism as a ‘thin
ideology'; second I look at the (few) pointers the literature gives on the nature of left-wing
populism; third I introduce the methodology and cases; finally I discuss the results of the analysis of
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
F. Panizza, ‘Introduction: Populism and the Mirror of Democracy’, in Populism and the Mirror of
Democracy, ed. F. Panizza (London: Verso, 2005), 1–31.
12
Stavrakakis and Katsambekis, ‘Left-Wing Populism in the European Periphery’; Tekdemir, ‘Is a Socialist
EU Possible via Left-Wing Populist Parties such as Syriza, Podemos and the HDP?’.
13
Peter Mair, ‘Populist Democracy vs. Party Democracy’, in Democracies and the Populist Challenge, ed.
Y. Mény and Y. Surel (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002), 81–98; Tim Bale, Stijn van Kessel, and Bryan T.
McGraw, ‘Thrown around with Abandon? Popular Understandings of Populism as Conveyed by the Print
Media: A UK Case Study’, Acta Politica 46, no. 2 2011).
14
E.g. Jonathan Freedland, ‘Behold, Ed Miliband’s New Populism of the Left’, The Guardian, 24 September 2013,
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/24/ed-miliband-leftwing-positions-brighton-speech.
party manifestos. The core argument is that populism is a ‘thin’ ideology that cleaves to more
developed ‘host’ ideologies, and therefore transforms its content according to the nature of the host
ideology. Therefore, right and left-wings populists deserve the appelation in terns of reverence to
‘the people’ as a core concept in politics; their juxtaposition of the interests of a morally pure
people against corrupt elites, and their advocacy of popular sovereignty. However, the content of
these concepts is very different: left-wing populists are primarily concerned with overcoming
economic exploitation of their people, by opposing economic elites and advocating popular
sovereignty based on egalitarian measures and political inclusivity. Right-wing populists primarily
focus on the cultural/political exploitation of their people, oppose political and cultural elites and
advocate popular sovereignty in a more delimited way, thereby being indeed less inclusionary. A
second core argument is that even mainstream parties have some elements of populism within their
electoral appeal, primarily people-centrism, although this falls some way short of being articulated
as a consistent ideology. The difference between populists and the mainstream is therefore of
degree, not kind.
What is populism?
It’s customary to begin discussion of populism by noting how controversial and contested the
concept is. That said, this is decreasingly the case, at least as far as the study of European political
parties is concerned. A tentative consensus that populism is a neutral, ‘thin-centred’ ideology, for
which a minimal definition can be provided, is increasingly emerging.15
This article utilises Cas Mudde’s well-known version of the ideological definition: namely
that populism is ‘an ideology that considers society to be ultimately separated into two
homogeneous and antagonistic groups, “the pure people” versus “the corrupt elite”, and which
argues that politics should be an expression of the volonté générale (general will) of the people”.16
An increasing number of analysts now share such a core definition, albeit with individual nuances.17 !
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
15
Mudde, ‘The Populist Zeitgeist’; Albertazzi and McDonnell, Twenty-First Century Populism; Ben Stanley,
‘The Thin Ideology of Populism’, Journal of Political Ideologies 13, no. 1 (2008): 95–110; Teun Pauwels,
‘Measuring Populism: A Quantitative Text Analysis of Party Literature in Belgium’, Journal of Elections,
Public Opinion & Parties 21, no. 1 (2011): 97–119.
16
17
Mudde, ‘The Populist Zeitgeist’, 543.
Albertazzi and McDonnell, Twenty-First Century Populism; Stefano Fella and Carlo Ruzza, Re-Inventing
the Italian Right: Territorial Politics, Populism and ‘Post-Fascism’, 1st ed. (Routledge, 2009); Stanley, ‘The
Thin Ideology of Populism’.
Broadly speaking, there are three main definitions of party populism in the literature: an
organisational form, a style/discourse, and an ideology.18 The chief advantage of the ideological
approach over other approaches is that it is a parsimonious, minimal and comparative definition that
is the only definition to focus on the core (rather than peripheral or instrumental) features of a
populist. The ideological focus on the ‘corrupt elite’ vs. ‘moral people’ dichotomy is a claim not
shared by demonstrably non-populist political actors, whereas ‘populist’ rhetoric and culture and
organisational forms are. There is certainly an elective affinity between populism and a certain
‘low’ political culture/discourse. Populism implies a distinct political style (e.g. ‘everyday’ or
‘tabloid’ language, an appeal to ‘gut-feelings’ and simplistic slogans and solutions – what Mudde
refers to as Stammtisch [barroom politics]).19 Moreover, populism can benefit from a distinct form
of organisation – centralised but fluid structures enabling a dominant charismatic leader to be ‘close
to the people’.20 But whilst this style and organisation clearly facilitates the ability of the populist
leader to mobilise the volonté genérale, charismatic authority, anti-institutional mobilisation,
simplistic language and a reliance on slogans are features shared by many non-populist actors.
Accordingly, the cultural and organisational definitions of populism are best seen as ‘flavour
enhancers’ – elements that often accompany and enrich populism, but are not intrinsic to it.21
However, even the ideological approach needs to be used judiciously. Arguing that
populism is a ‘thin ideology’ implies that it is analogous to other ‘thin ideologies’ such as
nationalism, which must commingle with thicker host ideologies (e.g. conservatism or socialism) in
order to develop a fuller programmatic identity.22 Moreover, since party ideologies are more
eclectic and diverse than philosophies, and often indeed absorb elements of competing
philosophies, we should not expect populist ideas always to be expressed consistently or verbatim.
Another implication of the ideological approach is that analysts that populism is an ordinal
(relative) not a nominal (absolute) category. That is, whereas it is might be possible to distinguish
between clearly populist and non-populist cases, many cases sit on a spectrum between a low
propensity and high propensity to populism. This is also the implication of Mudde’s theory of the
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
18
For more see Rooduijn and Pauwels, ‘Measuring Populism’, 3.
19
Mudde, ‘The Populist Zeitgeist’.
20
Taggart, Populism; Kurt Weyland, ‘Clarifying a Contested Concept: Populism in the Study of Latin
American Politics’, Comparative Politics 34, no. 1 (1 October 2001): 1–22, doi:10.2307/422412.
21
Koen Vossen, ‘Populism in the Netherlands after Fortuyn: Rita Verdonk and Geert Wilders Compared’,
Perspectives on European Politics and Society 11, no. 1 (2010): 22–38.
22
Michael Freeden, ‘Is Nationalism a Distinct Ideology?’, Political Studies 46, no. 4 (1998): 748–65.
populist Zeitgeist – populism has become so routinised in contemporary politics that the majority of
actors will have some populist elements.23
Therefore, strict operational criteria for observing populism need to be adopted. Logically in
order to qualify as populist, an actor must consistently invoke the ideology of populism in their
public (and especially electoral) appeals. But in order to judge whether such an ideology is present,
we need more defined lenses. Accordingly, this chapter below adopts three indices developed
clearly from the three-fold ideological definition above: people-centrism, anti-elitism and popular
sovereignty.
What is left-populism?
Despite the attention now devoted to southern European left-populism, it is far from a new
phenomenon. Being a thin ideology implies that populism has no intrinsically right-wing nature and
can be as easily combined with socialism as conservatism.24 Moreover, while leftists themselves
often regard populism as right-wing and distrust its cross-class appeal and ideological
amorphousness, some have found affinity with elements which are prima facie “a wishlist for a
socialist and radical-democratic agenda”: anti-elitism, empowerment, morality and welfarism.25
Even Marxism-Leninism was informed by the Russian populists (Narodniki), in particular their
radical rejection of constitutional limits on the state and assertion of the revolutionary potential of
the peasantry, as well as concepts like ‘people’s democracies’.26 Nevertheless, it is unsurprising that
left populism did not get much traction in Cold-War Europe – the dominant radical left parties were
communist parties whose Marxism-Leninist concern with doctrinal purity and correct class politics
only drastically weakened in the 1980s and was followed by a decade or so of ‘decline and
mutation’.27
In the 2000s, it began to be acknowledged that some European left parties (chiefly radical
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
23
Mudde, ‘The Populist Zeitgeist’.
24
Catherine Fieschi, ‘Introduction’, Journal of Political Ideologies 9, no. 3 (2004): 235–40; Paul Taggart,
‘Populism and Representative Politics in Contemporary Europe’, Journal of Political Ideologies 9, no. 3
(2004): 269–88.
25
Arditi, ‘Populism, Or, Politics at the Edges of Democracy’, 18.
26
For more see March, Radical Left Parties in Contemporary Europe.
27
March and Mudde, ‘“What”s Left of the Radical Left? The European Radical Left after 1989: Decline and
Mutation’.
parties) exhibited features of populism.28 Such ‘social-populist’ parties (such as the German Left
Party and Scottish Socialist Party) were far less Marxist and more doctrinally eclectic than
traditional democratic socialists and shared the typical populist concern with juxtaposing ‘the moral
people’ against ‘the corrupt elite.’ They no longer professed to be the ‘vanguard’ of the proletariat,
but rather the vox populi, and placed particularism (national, regional or ethnic concerns) before
internationalism. Even some formerly ‘orthodox’ communist parties such as the Russian and Czech
communists toned down their references to class struggle and focussed on attacking elites for their
corruption and dependency on Western influence in traditional populist terms. The crisis of
Marxism-Leninism and the rightwards drift of Blairite social democratic parties opened up space
for competitors to battle for traditionalist blue collar voters on the vacant ‘left’ of the political
spectrum.
Luke March later refined these arguments, distinguishing between ‘populist socialist’ and
‘social populist’ parties.29 The former have an ideological core little different from other radical left
parties, albeit overlaid with a far stronger anti-establishment and cross-class appeal. That populism
is not the core element of their ideology but related to their status as ‘outsider’ parties is shown by
ideological moderation as some confront the possibility of national office. Indeed, it is doubtful
whether the Dutch Socialist Party still classifies as populist.30
On the other hand, social populist parties have a more eclectic ‘social’ (rather than socialist)
ideology, having no systematic critique of capitalism but rather focussing on defending the social
rights of the people against the economic rapaciousness of the elite. For these parties, populism is
far more prominent in the ideological core and they approximate to ideal-typical populist parties,
fusing left-wing and right-wing themes behind an anti-establishment appeal. Currently Podemos
(contrary to Syriza, which incorporates more standard radical left anti-neo-liberal and Marxist
positions) appears an archetypal ‘social populist’ party, with its emphasis on being neither left nor
right, and on general democratic mobilisation against the corrupt political caste (la casta).
So to sum up, left populists of all stripes may be judged as left in their emphasis on
egalitarianism, and overcoming (economic) inequity a their mission statements. They may be
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
28
Cas Mudde, ‘Extremist Movements’, in Developments in West European Politics 2, ed. Paul Heywood, E.
Jones, and M. Rhodes (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002), 135–48; March and Mudde, ‘“What”s Left of the
Radical Left? The European Radical Left after 1989: Decline and Mutation’.
29
30
March, Radical Left Parties in Contemporary Europe.
Dan Keith, ‘Ready to Get Their Hands Dirty. The Socialist Party and GroenLinks in the Netherlands’, in
Left Parties in National Governments, ed. Jonathan Olsen, M. Koß, and Dan Hough (Basingstoke: Palgrave,
2010), 155–72.
judged as populist in that the “moral people versus corrupt elite” dichotomy is central (albeit to
varying degrees) to their ideology.
But beyond this egalitarian emphasis, what distinguishes left and right-wing populisms?
There are two main positions in the literature. One argues that populism trumps core ideology.
Right and left are essentially similar qua populist parties, and are generally seen as an equally
potent and/or dangerous challenge to political elites and/or democracy.31 A study of the UK’s BNP
and Respect parties also argues that right-and left-wing populism are not polar opposites but share
many attributes.32 Indeed, the differences are less of kind than degree: although ideological features
are relevant, the populism of these parties makes them ‘More Similar Than They’d Like to Admit.’
Certainly, several left-wing populists have drawn ethnocentric and identity issues usually associated
with the right into their ideological arsenal, and like the former Russian Motherland bloc, they
attempt to combine ‘protest populism and identity populism’.33
The second position is that core ideology trumps populism. Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser
argue that right and left-wing populism are distinct, and have provided three useful criteria for
distinguishing them.34 First, right-wing populism is allegedly more focussed on ethnic identity than
socio-economic issues. Left-wing populism is predominately focussed on socio-economic issues
(above all economic egalitarianism). Second, right-wing populism is primarily exclusionary
because of its nativism (an exclusivist ethnic nationalism that demarcates key groups such as
Muslims as outsiders), while left-wing populism is primarily inclusionary (focussed on policies of
economic, cultural and political incorporation). Third, although host ideology is important, its
salience differs: populism is less important than nativism in the ideology of the populist right, but
conversely left-wing populists are populists first and socialists second. Mudde and Rovira
Kaltwasser do concede strong similarities between left-and right-wing populists, particularly in
their attack on the elites, their distrust of liberal democracy, and their preference for mechanisms of
plebiscitary democracy such as referenda. However, and particularly in a later work, they argue that
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
31
Takis S. Pappas, Populism and Crisis Politics in Greece (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2014), 105.
32
Alistair Clark, Karin Bottom, and Colin Copus, ‘More Similar Than They’d Like to Admit? Ideology,
Policy and Populism in the Trajectories of the British National Party and Respect’, British Politics 3, no. 4
(December 2008): 511–34.
33
Marlène Laruelle, Rodina: Les Mouvances Nationalists Russes Du Loyalisme À L’opposition (CERISciences Po, 2006), 7, www.ceri-sciencespo.com/archive/mai06/artml.pdf.
34
Cas Mudde and Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser, Voices of the Peoples: Populism in Europe and Latin
America Compared, Working Paper (Kellogg Institute, 2011).
ideology is paramount: differences between left and right-wing populists emanate from differences
in underlying ideology, not the nature of their populism.35
Mudde and Kaltwasser’s examples of left-populism are from Latin America. However, that
their conclusions might also apply to European cases is plausible. For instance, the dichotomy
between ethnic identity and egalitarianism could be borne out in European parties’ Euroscepticism.
EU integration is an elite-led project that impinges on national sovereignty, and has become a
‘sitting duck’ for populist mobilisation.36 However, we might expect critiques of the EU to vary
depending on ideological position: the right-wing populist critique of the EU is traditionally
regarded as focussing on its threats to national identity and sovereignty, the left-wing critique much
more on economic insecurity engendered by neo-liberal globalisation and the EU’s internal
market.37 Second: the exclusionary-inclusionary division might be borne out in approaches to
welfare issues. One of the distinguishing features of right-wing populists is said to be ‘welfare
chauvinism’, i.e. parties defend the welfare state but only for the native people: outgroups like
immigrants and the unemployed may be excluded.38 On the other hand, populist socialists like the
German Left Party have aimed to mobilise excluded groups of the population, such as the
unemployed and socially deprived.39 Left-populism’s emphasis on egalitarianism can be seen as
relatively ‘civilized’ and inclusive because it focuses on the demos not the ethnos.40 Indeed, a recent
study of Syriza argues that it is profoundly democratic and emancipatory.41 Additionally, when
some argue that social democratic parties should become more left-populist, this involves
mobilising those left behind by economic and cultural modernization and the technocratic ‘policies
of ‘Third Way’ social democrats.42
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
35
Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser, ‘Exclusionary vs. Inclusionary Populism’.
36
Canovan, ‘Trust the People! Populism and the Two Faces of Democracy’, 6.
37
E.g. Catherine De Vries and Erica Edwards, ‘Taking Europe To Its Extremes’, Party Politics 15, no. 1
(2009).
38
Cas Mudde, Populist Radical Right Parties in Europe, (Cambridge University Press, 2007).
39
March, Radical Left Parties in Contemporary Europe.
40
March, ‘From Vanguard of the Proletariat to Vox Populi’.
41
Stavrakakis and Katsambekis, ‘Left-Wing Populism in the European Periphery’.
42
R Cuperus, ‘The Populist Deficiency of European Social Democracy’, Internationale Politik Und
Gesellschaft 3 (2003): 108; Owen Jones, ‘How Ed Miliband Can Harness the Right’s Tactics to Bring in a
Wave of Left-Wing Populism in 2014’, The Independent, 1 January 2014,
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/how-ed-miliband-can-harness-the-rights-tactics-to-bring-ina-wave-of-leftwing-populism-in-2014-9032903.html.
Mudde and Kaltwasser’s third point is more debatable: there is no a priori reason to think
that socialism will be less important than populism to European left-populists. As noted above, leftpopulists may devote less attention to doctrinal purity and internationalism, and more to
regionalism and nationalism.43 The dominance of populism over socialism in Latin America may be
more due to context, namely the prevalence of presidentialism and personalistic politics, than to
something intrinsic in left-populism. The ensuing analysis tests the validity of the populism-trumpsideology and ideology-trumps-populism theses. But first it turns to methodological issues.
Operationalising populism
Recent years have seen a growth in ‘methodological populism’: attempts to measure party populism
systematically and comparatively. They have emerged out of disappointment with older discussions
of populism, which either tend to be single-party case studies or to declare certain parties populist
‘by fiat’, often without any obviously clear or consistent criteria.44 The dominant approach to
observing populism is still the Sartorian approach, which identifies minimal (ideological) criteria
applied to decide whether a party is populist.45 Despite the detail and geographical scope this
approach brings, its shortcomings include its assumption that populism is a nominal category (i.e.
parties are either populist or not), and its lack of clarity over the categorisation principles for many
parties.46
Latterly then, a number of authors have sought to measure populism more systematically via
content analysis, which provides both temporal and spatial consistency. This study adopts a
qualitative content analysis approach adapted from Rooduijn and Pauwels.47 While rather laborious
and not suitable for large-n studies (for which they advocate computer-based procedures), only this
approach provides the requisitive level of detail for an in-depth analysis of populism where the
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
43
March and Mudde, ‘“What”s Left of the Radical Left? The European Radical Left after 1989: Decline and
Mutation’.
44
Kirk A. Hawkins, ‘Is Chávez Populist? Measuring Populist Discourse in Comparative Perspective’,
Comparative Political Studies 42, no. 8 (2009).
45
Mudde, Populist Radical Right Parties in Europe; March, ‘From Vanguard of the Proletariat to Vox
Populi’; Vossen, ‘Populism in the Netherlands after Fortuyn’; March, Radical Left Parties in Contemporary
Europe; Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser, Voices of the Peoples: Populism in Europe and Latin America
Compared.
46
47
Pauwels, ‘Measuring Populism’.
M. Rooduijn and Teun Pauwels, ‘Measuring Populism in Comparative Research Two Content Analysis
Methods Compared’ (Politiciologenetmaal, Leuven, 2010).
emphasis is not just quantitative (counting the instances and proportion of populism) but more
qualitative (understanding how populism is constructed, what is meant by it and how it differs
between parties). Moreover, the approach is consistent with mine in that it also argues that populism
is a thin-centred ideology that is most appropriate to evaluate via party manifestos. True, these
documents are not always widely read, and may only gain a snapshot of a party’s ideology, but
since they are the party documents that most succinctly summarise parties stances for the benefit of
a wider audience, and are (relatively) easy to access, they are the best starting point for tracing the
evolution of party ideas comparatively over time, relative to studies which analyse party broadcasts,
leaders’ speeches or a panoply of party statements, and which are generally limited to an even
smaller-n sample.48 An additional virtue of this approach is that it too argues that populism is
relative rather than absolute and allows a more fine-grained analysis. Alternative approaches taking
an absolute categorisation can encounter trouble. For example Hawkins uses three indices
(nonpopulist; mixed; populist).49 His finding that George W. Bush is coded as populist leads him to
conclude that his scale is wrong.50 Yet, a more sensitive ordinal scale might have concluded that
George W. Bush did possess some elements of populism, without necessarily fulfilling all the
ideological requisites for the term.
This analysis has two principal differences from that of Rooduijn and Pauwels. First, I use
‘quasi-sentences’ rather than paragraphs as the unit of analysis, considering that paragraph coding is
too broad-brush to allow qualitative analysis, whereas conversely, whether words like ‘people’,
‘elite’ and ‘democracy’ have a populist meaning depends on context that using just words as the
unit of analysis ambiguous and slippery may fail to comprehend.51 Therefore I adopted the
approach of the Comparative Manifestos Project, which sees the ‘quasi-sentence’ as the main unit
of analysis, a quasi-sentence being a sentence or clause that encapsulates a discrete relevant and
meaningful statement.52 Accordingly, prior to analysis, each manifesto was divided into quasi!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
48
J. Jagers and S. Walgrave, ‘Populism as Political Communication Style: An Empirical Study of Political
Parties’ Discourse in Belgium’, European Journal of Political Research 46, no. 3 (2007): 319–45; For
leaders’ speeches see Hawkins, ‘Is Chávez Populist?’; For other statements see Vossen, ‘Populism in the
Netherlands after Fortuyn’.
49
Hawkins, ‘Is Chávez Populist?’.
50
Ibid.
51
Emmanuelle Reungoat, ‘Anti-EU Parties and the People: An Analysis of Populism in French
Euromanifestos’, Perspectives on European Politics and Society 11, no. 3 (2010): 292–312; M. Rooduijn,
S.L. de Lange, and W. van der Brug, ‘A Populist Zeitgeist? Has Populism Become Mainstream in Western
Europe (1988-2008)?’ (ECPR General Conference, Reykjavik, 2011).
52
Annika Werner, Onawa Lacewell, and Andrea Volkens, ‘Manifesto Coding Instructions (4th Fully Revised
Edition)’, in The Manifesto Data Collection. Manifesto Project (MRG/CMP/MARPOR), by Andrea Volkens
sentences.
The second difference from Rooduijn and Pauwels is that whereas they use a two-fold index
of populism (people-centrism vs. anti-elitism), I add a third (popular sovereignty). While agreeing
that the first two indices are the core components in the ideological definition, and satisfy the first
clause of Mudde’s definition (the pure people versus corrupt elite dichotomy), to be consistent with
the definition, we also need a category that satisfies the last (politics as expression of the volonté
générale). Popular sovereignty does this. Moreover, as an ideology, populism has both descriptive
and proscriptive elements. Whereas populists may, on occasion claim to be ‘reluctantly political’
and disgusted by the reality of politics, the reality is that, if populism is to exist as more than an
obscure doctrine, it has to develop an explicitly political, mobilisational aim.53 That is ‘[p]opulism
arises from a dissatisfaction with existing politics but also is an attempt to fix its representional
failures.’54 Therefore this last element is essentially about the operationalisation of the first two: the
specific mechanisms and policies whereby the polity can be changed (and the elite disempowered)
to further people’s power.!
Most analyses do concur that people-centrism and anti-elitism are the core concepts, but add
a different range of supplementary ones. For example, some focus on exclusionism or ‘claims for
democracy’.55 Others focus on Manicheanism or ‘sense of crisis.’56 Yet most of these
supplementary elements can be incorporated in the existing indices. Exclusionism is the most
problematic, because some analysts argue that an ‘exclusion strategy’ is an intrinsic part of
populism, i.e. the antagonistic relationship between the people and elite, the emphasis on
homogeneity of these terms, and populism’s Manicheanism mean that certain ‘outsider’ groups
which do not fit into the ‘true people’ are denigrated.57 Meny and Surel further add that this
exclusion works in two dimensions, a horizontal relationship between people and ‘dangerous
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
et al. (Berlin: Berlin: Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung (WZB), 2011), https://manifestoproject.wzb.eu/.
53
Taggart, ‘Populism and Representative Politics in Contemporary Europe’, 276.
54
Jon Beasley-Murray, Posthegemony: Political Theory and Latin America (Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 2010), 27.
55
Vossen, ‘Populism in the Netherlands after Fortuyn’.
56
E.g. Hawkins, ‘Is Chávez Populist?’; Matthijs Rooduijn, ‘The Nucleus of Populism: In Search of the
Lowest Common Denominator’, Government and Opposition 49, no. 4 (2014): 573–99.
57
Jagers and Walgrave, ‘Populism as Political Communication Style’; Albertazzi and McDonnell, TwentyFirst Century Populism.
others’ and a vertical one between people and the elite.58 However, whereas the latter is
undoubtedly intrinsic to populism, there is nothing necessarily exclusivist about the concept of
people, and the nature of this concept may differ markedly between right and left populists.
Whereas (especially extreme) right-wing populists typically ‘Other’ groups such as ethnic
minorities, immigrants, non-standard religious groups, welfare-state dependents or the unemployed,
it is claimed that left-wing populism is inclusionary precisely to such these groups. Accordingly,
including exclusionism within the core definition of populism would a priori bias the definition
towards right wing-populism.59 ‘Claims for democracy’ or direct democracy are not espoused by all
populists, but where they exist are part of general demands for popular sovereignty. Manicheanism
is implied by the central dichotomy between the pure people and turpitudinous elite. Finally, the
notion of ‘crisis’ is undoubtedly important but is integral to the central people-elite dichotomy: for
the populist, any grave crisis will be elite-generated, will dramatically impinge on the people, and
will be resolved by a return to true popular power.60
Analysis took two stages. In the first stage, I calculated the percentage of quasi-sentences
referring to the three indices, which were used to make an initial assessment of the degree of
populism in each party. After this, I undertook more detailed qualitative content analysis of each
party manifesto with the aim of illustrating the similarities and differences between populism as
espoused by each party. The nature of the indices is as follows (fuller details are provided in the
Appendix):
People-centrism
People-centrism goes beyond the simple invocation of the ‘people’ (few political actors will not do
this at some point), but to support the ideological definition of populism, the people needs to be
seen as 1) a main political referent: 2) invoked in unambiguously positive terms, 3) a unified,
homogenous entity; 4) co-terminous with the populist entity. Therefore coding for people-centrism
starts with simply measuring whether the manifestos refer to the ‘people’, but does not stop there.
The ‘people’ can be referred to in many different ways (e.g. ‘citizens’, ‘the country’, ‘everyone’).
Who precisely the people are will depend on party and context. De Raadt et al. provide two useful
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
58
Y. Mény and Y. Surel, ‘The Constitutive Ambiguity of Populism’, in Democracies and the Populist
Challenge, ed. Y. Mény and Y. Surel (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002), 1–21.
59
Rooduijn and Pauwels, ‘Measuring Populism in Comparative Research Two Content Analysis Methods
Compared’.
60
Taggart, Populism, 93–4; Hans-Georg Betz, ‘Conditions Favouring the Success and Failure of Radical
Right-Wing Populist Parties in Contemporary Democracies’, in Democracies and the Populist Challenge, ed.
Y. Mény and Y. Surel (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002), 198.
ways of categorising ‘the people’ which will be employed further below.61 First is the nationalism
of the people – whether it is defined in civic, ethnic or regionalist terms. Second, parties may speak
of the people in a general vis-à-vis government (‘collectivist populism’) or refer more often to
subgroups of the population as examples of the whole (partes-pro-toto), e.g. using terms such as
‘the working population’ or ‘tax-payers’. This is ‘particularistic populism.’
Thus a populist party can refer to its people as nation, ethnic group or even class, provided
that the party identifies completely with this group and sees them as a homogenous identity
counterposed to the elite.62 As Deegan-Krause and Haughton note, a helpful way of elucidating
populism is determining what are resolutely non-populist ideas.63 For example, the concepts of
partes-pro-toto needs to be delineated carefully: if subgroups of the population are not clearly
identified with the ‘people’, but the interests of ethnicities, regional groups or classes are seen as
different from those of the general population, then this is inherently antithetical to populism. This
is a potential difficulty for analysing left-populism, because some may still appeal to ‘workers’ and
the ‘working class’. To count all references to the working class as populist without checking
whether the appeal is to the workers as a class concept or as pars-pro-toto risks seriously distorting
the results.64 For instance, it will make a difference whether the appeal is to the working class vs.
the capitalists (class appeal) or to ‘working people’ or ‘our workers’ vs. ‘the big-business elite’ (a
populist dichotomy). An important part of people-centrism is where parties do not explicitly
mention the people but imply commonality with them (by using terms such as ‘we’, ‘all of us’),
since populist parties claim not to be different from the people, but to be guided by their ideas and
‘common sense’.65
Anti-elitism
Anti-elitism is evidenced by a Manichean dichotomy between the moral people and the corrupt elite.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
61
Jasper de Raadt, David Hollanders, and André Krouwel, Varieties of Populism: An Analysis of the
Programmatic Character of Six European Parties, Working Papers Political Science (Amsterdam: Vrije
Universiteit, 2004).
62
Margaret Canovan, Populism (Junction Books, London, 1981); Mudde, ‘The Populist Zeitgeist’; Panizza,
‘Introduction: Populism and the Mirror of Democracy’, 5.
63
Kevin Deegan-Krause and Tim Haughton, ‘Toward a More Useful Conceptualization of Populism: Types
and Degrees of Populist Appeals in the Case of Slovakia’, Politics & Policy 37, no. 4 (2009): 821–41.
64
As to some extent does Reungoat, ‘Anti-EU Parties and the People’.
65
Catherine Fieschi and Paul Heywood, ‘Trust, Cynicism and Populist Anti-politics’, Journal of Political
Ideologies 9, no. 3 (2004): 289–309.
In order to qualify as populist, an actor needs to see the elite as 1) a main political referent; 2)
unambiguously negative, and (in mirror image to the people) as a unified, homogenously corrupt
entity; 3) the major adversary of the populist actor. For this index, I start with the basic question of
whether the party manifesto mentions elites, whether these elites are construed positively or
negatively, what kind of elites are mentioned, and what their relationship is to the people. As with
the people-centrism index, the (negative) view needs to be expressed towards the elite in general,
rather than just elements of that elite. Similarly, there is no room for nuances: the elite must be
profoundly hostile and destructive towards the people, the principal cause of a wholesale political
crisis.
Again, it is helpful to examine what is not populist. As Deegan-Krause and Haughton note,
while few parties will argue that elites are wholly a good thing (some conservative and fascist
parties may be exceptions), some might argue that elite rule is justified because of greater
‘experience, expertise, competence, and probity’.66 Criticism of specific elements within an elite (a
certain politician or political party) is not populist but a normal part of politics: a populist appeal
must regard the elite in its entirety as anathema. Nevertheless, elements of the elite may act as
partes-pro-toto, as specific examples of the horror of the whole. Again, de Raadt et al. provide
useful categorizations: they distinguish between ‘anti-elite’ populism, whereby parties detail the
allegedly corrupt behaviour of a political class in toto and ʻanti-intermediariesʼ populism, i.e. where
populism focuses on intermediary organisations and institutional/cultural frameworks that
(allegedly) stand between the people and those that rule them and are used by the latter to maintain
this difference – invocations against ‘bureaucrats’ or ‘political correctness’ may count. Moreover anti-elitism can oppose wide range of differing elites in different locations, be they regional,
national or international: a political elite (politicians in general, political parties, the ‘established’
political order, EU bureaucrats), an economic elite (multinationals, business elites, bank executives
or capitalists in general), a cultural elite (intellectuals), a media elite (journalists) and a legal elite
(judges), or their terms may be more generalist ‘the regime’ ‘the establishment’ etc.
Popular sovereignty
Popular sovereignty is present when populism moves beyond extolling the virtues of the people to a
claim for greater politicisation in the name of the people.67 Populism is not directly anti-democratic,
but rather supports an unfettered plebiscitary democracy against the institutional and constitutional
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
66
Deegan-Krause and Haughton, ‘Toward a More Useful Conceptualization of Populism’.
67
Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser, Populism in Europe and the Americas.
limits on the common sense of the people integral to liberal democracy.68 Nevertheless, democracy
is not seen as a virtue in itself but a means to full people’s power – populists may advocate nondemocratic options such as charismatic leadership or centralized party structures as often as they
espouse referenda, popular initiatives and plebiscites.69
To measure popular sovereignty, I start by identifying any quasi-sentences that call for
increased power to be given to the people. Some of these will be general calls for greater popular
involvement or unfettered leadership to further popular sovereignty. Although any positive
invocation of the people implies potential overlap with category one, these statements were only
coded once: the distinction drawn is that if the message goes beyond extolling the virtues of the
people or factual claims about the people and is action-orientated or normative (power will be or
should be returned to the people), this was coded under popular sovereignty rather than peoplecentrism. Non-populist claims will be those that re-affirm existing political and economic
institutions that mediate between the popular will and policy outcomes and essentially support the
elite status quo.
Again, de Raadt et al’s categorisations will be used below to further delineate popular
sovereignty. We can identify ‘abstract populists’: parties that talk about sovereignty in the abstract
(promises to ‘get people involved’ or ‘increase popular control’). Conversely, there are ‘pragmatic
populists’, who have more concrete proposals (e.g. calling for greater direct democracy or
referenda). Moreover, we could expect right-left divisions over socio-economic equality to be borne
out in relative emphases on political sovereignty versus economic democracy (e.g. greater popular
control over corporations). Key markers of whether sovereignty is ‘exclusive’ or ‘inclusive’, will be
where there is an explicit ‘Other’ identified (the expectation is that right-wing populists augment
the rights of the ‘native’ population, but the left is more inclusive of non-indigenous groups).
A note on the case studies
For the content analysis, I examined the electoral manifestos for four populist parties: The British
National Party (BNP), UK Independence Party (UKIP), the Scottish Socialist Party (SSP), and the
Respect party, as well as the mainstream Labour and Conservative parties, in all Westminster and
Scottish elections from 1999-2015. The Scottish emphasis was chosen because of the focus on the
SSP, which has been seldom examined in detail but is seen as an archetypal left-wing populist party
in the literature, and, whilst falling on harder times lately, was one of Europe’s most successful
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
68
Mudde, ‘The Populist Zeitgeist’; Mény and Surel, ‘The Constitutive Ambiguity of Populism’.
69
Canovan, Populism; Taggart, Populism.
radical left parties in 1999-2007.70 The SSP does not run outside Scotland but has regularly
produced lengthy manifestos that provide detailed data. Conversely, all the other parties analysed
have contested Scottish elections. Accordingly, combining UK and Scottish elections over a
sixteen-year period maximizes the available database.71
As well as the SSP, the other populist parties have also been seen as typical ‘populist
parties’ in the literature, and so are ideal cases for establishing whether the populist label is
substantiated. Their precise features do differ, and might be expected to affect our findings. For
instance, the BNP is an ‘extreme right’ party with a documented propensity to nativism,
authoritarianism and xenophobia, albeit becoming more moderate and populist in recent years.72
UKIP is a relatively more moderate radical right populist party, more democratic but with a similar
hard Eurosceptic and anti-immigrant emphasis.73 Respect is to some degree the UK-wide analogue
of the SSP (and long had an agreement not to compete with it in Scotland). However, whereas the
SSP is separatist (calling for an Independent Scottish Socialist Republic), Respect is unionist and
also has a strong communalist element, emerging as part of the anti-Iraq war movement in 2004 and
retaining its strongest roots in Muslim communities, such as in Bradford where its sole MP George
Galloway has his seat.74
Analysing the level of populism
Mainstream parties
Table 1 analyses populism in the two mainstream ‘control’ cases. On first glance, these results are
surprising. The general proportion of populist statements is high, rarely under 10 percent, with an
average score of 13.43 percent and some significant highs (22.12 percent for the Conservatives in
2010, 19.35 percent for Labour in 2015). On closer analysis, we can see that, although the
mainstream parties certainly possess elements of populism, this is loaded very heavily on to the
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
70
March, Radical Left Parties in Contemporary Europe.
71
Some manifestos were missing. E.g. I included the 2006 Respect regional manifesto because of its
relatively few documents available.
72
Piero Ignazi, ‘The Silent Counter-Revolution. Hypotheses on the Emergence of Extreme Right-Wing
Parties in Europe’, European Journal of Political Research 22, no. 1 (1992): 3–34.
73
Amir Abedi and Thomas Carl Lundberg, ‘Doomed to Failure? UKIP and the Organisational Challenges
Facing Right-Wing Populist Anti-Political Establishment Parties’, Parliamentary Affairs 62, no. 1 (2009):
72–87.
74
Clark, Bottom, and Copus, ‘More Similar Than They’d Like to Admit?’; March, Radical Left Parties in
Contemporary Europe.
people-centrism index (an average of 10.73), with far less on the other two indices and an almost
miniscule score for anti-elitism (0.33 per cent, with several manifestos having zero references).
Given that we have defined popular sovereignty as politicising populism, and the people-centrism
vs anti-elitism emphasis as the core one, this means that these parties do not adequately fit the full
ideological definition of populism.
Table 1. Populism in mainstream parties
No. of quasi-
People-centrism
Anti-elitism
sentences
Popular
Total percentage
sovereignty
of populist
statements
Conservatives
1999 (Scotland)
564
47 (8.33)
5 (0.87)
15 (2.65)
11.88
2001 (UK)
743
68 (9.15)
8 (1.07)
12 (1.62)
11.84
2003 (Scotland)
557
60 (10.77)
1 (0.18)
5 (0.90)
11.85
2005 (UK)
443
61 (13.76)
0 (0.0)
20 (4.51)
18.28
2007 (Scotland)
833
57 (6.84)
5 (0.60)
4 (0.48)
7.92
2010 (UK)
1257
199 (15.83)
7 (0.56)
72 (5.73)
22.12
2011(Scotland)
400
22 (5.50)
0 (0.00)
3 (0.75)
6.25
2015 (UK)
1470
190 (12.93)
4 (0.27)
12 (0.82)
14.01
Total
6267
704 (11.18)
30 (0.48)
143 (2.28)
13.94
2001 (UK)
1705
139 (8.15)
3 (0.18)
35 (2.05)
10.38
2005 (UK)
1154
114 (9.88)
2 (0.17)
26 (2.25)
12.31
2007 (Scotland)
1351
124 (9.19)
0 (0.0)
20 (1.48)
10.66
2010 (UK)
1322
173 (13. 09)
4 (0.30)
34 (2.57)
15.96
2011 (Scotland)
746
69 (9.25)
0 (00)
8 (1.07)
10.32
2015 (UK)
920
153 (16.63)
4 (0.43)
21 (2.28)
19.35
Total
7198
772 (10.73)
13 (0.18)
144 (2.00)
12.91
10.96
0.33
2.14
13.43
Labour
Average
score
for
mainstream parties
A closer look still reinforces this. The mainstream parties are not averse to invoking the people in
terms that could appear verbatim in the more radical parties’ manifestos, (e.g. ‘our social fabric is
frayed and our political system has betrayed the people’ [Conservatives 2010]; ‘we can change
direction, begin to return power to people’ [Labour 2015]).75 Most often though, people-centrism is
implicit as they identifying with the common sense of the people and their aspirations (the
Conservatives’ 2010 claim that ‘we are all in this together’ is apposite here). Such a demotic idiom,
which often uses folksy language, reference to ‘ordinary’ people or the life-histories of real people,
is difficult to distentangle from these parties’ role as large catch-all parties who are aiming to
encapsulate the median voter.
Symptomatically, where it exists at all, these parties’ anti-elitism is rarely focussed on a
systemic critique (and exceptions like the Conservatives’ comments on the political system are brief
and not elaborated), and most often is focussed on ‘anti-intemediaries’ populism – such as
‘centralised bureaucracy’ or political elites in the vaguest sense: ‘unaccountable politicians’, ‘a
privileged few at the top’ etc.). Moreover, the parties’ populism appears more strategic and
situational than ideological – it is perhaps not coincidental that the highest average score (19.04) as
well as that for popular sovereignty (4.2) was in 2010 in the immediate wake of the financial crisis
and Westminster expenses scandal. With the exception of the SSP, none of the radical parties’
highpoints are in that year, despite the apparently fertile issue opportunities.
Overall, these results certainly seem to endorse the idea of the populist Zeitgeist and the UK
as a polity with a high propensity to populism. However, although these parties possess populist
elements, populism is scarcely their defining or dominant feature.
The radical parties
The further results of the analysis can be seen in Table 2 (comparison between mainstream and
radical parties) and Table 3 (detailed party analysis). As Table 2 shows, the indices of populism
hold up well. Despite the high benchmark set by the mainstream parties, the radicals are clearly
more populist (nearly twice as much in the case of the right), and each exceeds 15 percent in total.
Moreover, the statements are more evenly distributed across the indices, with the clearest difference
being the level of anti-elitism, which is the second-biggest score for left and right radicals. This
appears to justify the populist label. Notable too is the left-right difference – parties of the right
(mainstream and radical) are more populist than the left. The substantial difference between left and
right radicals is in the level of people-centrism (over six percent higher for the right-wing radicals,
which accounts for the majority of the difference between them and (unlike for the left) is also
higher than the mainstream parties. Why this should be the case will be explored further below.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
75
Conservatives, Invitation to Join the Government of Britain. The Conservative Manifesto 2010 (London: The
Conservative Party, 2010); Labour, Britain Can Be Better. The Labour Party Manifesto 2015 (London: The Labour
Party, 2015).
Table 2: Levels of populism: mainstream versus radicals
People-centrism
Anti-elitism
Popular sovereignty
Total percentage of
populist statements
Right-wing
Mainstream
11.18
0.48
2.28
13.94
Radicals
12.79
5.57
5.39
23.74
Mainstream
10.73
0.18
2.00
12.91
Radicals
6.14
5.49
4.60
16.23
Left-wing
Table 3 provides the specifics for each party. Evidently, there are wild variations in the levels of
populism in each manifesto (for example, the SSP’s populism score ranges from 11.08 to 44.54).
Generally these differences are explicable simply by the length of manifesto: with the shortest
manifestos tending to be the most populist. The shorter manifestos allow parties to concentrate on
core themes rather than specifics, so populist messages appear more strongly. The longer
manifestos have detailed policy proposals with often no direct relation to populism (for example,
policies on road tolls or workplace legislation).
Examining people-centrism
Of all parties, the BNP perhaps gets closest to a ‘folksy’ demotic style, reflected in its high peoplecentrism score (9.82). Often, this is simply reflected in general phrases indicating a common
popular identity (e.g. ‘our population’, ‘our community’ or ‘our country.’) The party is most prone
to express classically populist sentiments, such as in 2003 arguing that: ‘[E]merging from the
hitherto passive and silent majority is a voice that is getting louder each day. The voice of ordinary
people who are frustrated and angry about the present and fearful of their future’.76 Similarly, the
party expressly identifies itself with the people: as in 2010 when it calls its members the ‘trustees
for future generations’.77 As might be expected, the concept of people is usually infused with a
strong ethnic nationalist sentiment with the term ‘nation’ being used as often as more purely
populist terms (‘once proud nation’), and being qualified by terms which imply a cultural or racial
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
76
BNP, BNP Scotland Manifesto. Freedom: The Manifesto of the British National Party (Glasgow: BNP
Scotland, 2003).
77
BNP, Democracy, Freedom, Culture and Identity. British National Party General Elections Manifesto
2010 (Welshpool: BNP, 2010).
Table 3: Levels of populism: Right vs. left
No.
of
quasi-
People-centrism
Anti-elitism
sentences
Popular
Total percentage
sovereignty
of
populist
statements
BNP
2001 (UK)
55
12 (21.81)
2 (3.63)
5 (9.09)
34.54
2003 (Scotland)
183
24 (13.11)
15 (8.20)
8 (4.37)
25.68
2005 (UK)
893
95 (10.64)
94 (10.53)
61 (6.83)
28.00
2007 (Scotland)
340
24 (7.06)
11 (3.24)
17 (5.00)
15.29
2010 (UK)
1293
118 (9. 13)
85 (6.57)
65 (5.03)
20.73
2011 (Scotland)
290
27 (9.31)
24 (8.28)
22 (7.59)
25.17
Total
3054
300 (9.82)
231 (7.56)
178 (5.83)
23.21
2001 (UK)
614
84 (13.68)
27 (4. 40)
20 (3.26)
21.34
2005 (UK)
384
80 (20.83)
18 (4.69)
27 (7.03)
34.38
2007 (Scotland)
103
26 (25.24)
2 (1.94)
10 (9.71)
36.89
2010 (UK)
379
26 (6. 86)
20 (5.28)
30 (7.92)
20.05
2011 (Scotland)
144
13 (9.03)
6 (4.17)
24 (16.67)
29.86
2015 (UK)
1265
226 (17.87)
30 (2.37)
32 (2.53)
22.77
Total
2889
455 (15.75)
103 (3.57)
143 (4.95)
24.27
12.79
5.57
5.39
23.74
UKIP
Average score
for right-wing
populists
Table 3 cont.
No.
of
quasi-
People-centrism
Anti-elitism
sentences
Popular
Total percentage
sovereignty
of
populist
statements
SSP
1999 (Scotland)
179
7 (3.91)
25 (13.97
23 (12.85)
30.73
2001 (UK)
318
6 (1.89)
23 (7.23)
22 (6.92)
16.04
2003 (Scotland)
1038
54 (5.20)
32 (3.08)
29 (2.79)
11.08
2005 (UK)
1074
69 (6.42)
57 (5.31)
47 (4.38)
16.11
2007 (Scotland)
1128
101 (8.95)
26 (2.30)
41 (3.63)
14.89
2010 (UK)
36
4 (9.09)
9 (27.27)
3 (9.09)
44.44
2011 (Scotland)
664
42 (6.33)
22 (3.31)
30 (4.52)
14.16
2015 (UK)
614
56 (9.12)
36 (5.86)
27 (4.40)
19.38
Total
5051
339 (6.71)
230 (4.55)
222 (4.40)
15.66
2005 (UK)
633
33 (5.21)
39 (6.16)
31 (4.89)
16.27
2006 (local)
731
40 (5.47)
43 (5.88)
34 (4.65)
16.00
2010 (UK)
106
10 (9.43
5 (4.71)
8 (7.55)
21.70
2011 (Scotland)
73
3 (4.11)
12 (16.44)
1 (1.37)
21.92
Total
1543
86 (5.57)
99 (6.42)
74 (4.80)
16.79
6.14
5.49
4.60
16.23
Respect
Average score
for
left-wing
populists
belonging (‘indigenous British people’, ‘the native British people’). The party ties itself in knots
balancing Scottish manifestos where it refers to ‘the Scottish nation’, and UK ones where it
reinforces that Scots and others are integral parts of the ‘native British peoples of our islands’.78 The
party rarely refers to particularist groups (except occasionally the white working class and
pensioners) and so its view of the people should be seen as profoundly ethnic and collectivist.
Alone of the parties here, the BNP expounds an archetypal vision of the populist ‘heartland’:
a clean, beautiful country, free of pollution in all its forms, where pensioners live well.79 This is a
country revelling in its historical achievements, military, architectural and cultural, bound together
by Christianity, traditional values and (in the case of Scotland) ‘[T]he wisdom inherent in the old
crafts of weaving, musical instrument manufacturers, farriers, saddlers, stane dyke building and
others’.80 This is a nation where the ‘[T]he pub has in fact become part of our cultural heritage and
has become as symbolic of Britain as the red telephone box or Dover cliffs’.81 The ethnic nature of
the BNP’s nationalism is reinforced by the manifestos’ concern with mass immigration,
multiculturalism, the black population’s alleged propensity to crime, and the threat of militant
Islam, all of which are existential challenges to this idyllic heartland.
UKIP in contrast claims a civic concept of nation-hood. Directly seeking to demarcate itself
from the BNP, the party declares that: ‘UKIP believes in civic nationalism … open and inclusive to
anyone … regardless of ethnic or religious background. We reject the “blood and soil” ethnic
nationalism of extremist parties’.82 However, this nationalism is not altogether without ethnic
elements, as the party declares ‘UKIP opposes multiculturalism and political correctness, and
promotes uniculturalism - aiming to create a single British culture embracing all races and religion’.
Beyond its concern for ‘British-ness’, UKIP’s concept of people is for the most part, cultureneutral, referring to ‘citizens’, ‘taxpayers’, ‘the electorate’ and ‘the public’. UKIP’s ‘heartland’ is
referred to only implicitly: it idealises a ‘free, democratic’ and crime-free Britain run by
Westminster not Brussels, with the family and British values at the core of its stability.83 As
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
78
BNP, Rebuilding British Democracy. British National Party General Election 2005 Manifesto (Welshpool:
BNP, 2005).
79
For the concept, see Taggart, Populism.
80
BNP, BNP Scotland Manifesto. Freedom: The Manifesto of the British National Party.
81
BNP, Democracy, Freedom, Culture and Identity. British National Party General Elections Manifesto
2010.
82
83
UKIP, UKIP Manifesto April 2010. Empowering the People. (Newton Abbot: UKIP, 2010).
UKIP, Say No to the European Union. UK Independence Party European Elections Manifesto June 2004
(Birmingham: UKIP, 2004).
important is that this Britain should be free from bureaucratic regulation and the ‘rules and rights’
allegedly ‘killing off the virtues of trust, initiative, responsibility and respect that make society
work’.84 Although some of the features are similar to the BNP’s (the role of family, stability, the
priority of law and order), UKIP’s view of Britain is not recognisably different from that of the
mainstream Conservative Party. This is particularly evident in 2015 – the party’s rising support has
allowed it position itself as a credible contender for those who ‘believe we should seize the
opportunity for real change in our politics’. The manifesto is replete with demotic invocations to
protect ‘our borders, ‘our NHS’ etc. in ways which blend the catch-all intentions of the mainstream
parties and the party’s more authentically populist aims to put it [power’ back into the hands of the
people of this country’.85
The SSP shows some similarities. It is unequivocally a populist party in discourse, aiming to
‘improve the lives of ordinary people’ who are ‘abandoned by the mainstream politicians’.86 There
is some overlap with the aforementioned parties; notably, although unlike them, the SSP speaks for
an independent Scotland, this is on the basis that Scotland is a nation. The SSP even claims be a
more consistent advocate of this position than the Scottish National Party. However, there the
similarities end. The SSP’s nationalism is unambiguously civic (it promises to accord citizenship to
all inhabitants of an independent Scotland irrespective of place of birth). Moreover, while it talks in
glowing terms of Scottish culture and how to improve it, its preferred term of reference is the
‘people of Scotland’ not the ‘Scottish people’ or ‘nation’ and despite the separatist bent it is in other
ways a traditional radical left party. For instance, it declares its adherence to internationalism and
‘democratic socialism’, and its concept of people is internationalist: ‘[T]he SSP stands for cooperation and solidarity among the peoples and nations of the European continent’.87
What’s more, despite the prevalence of populist terms, the party has not altogether
transcended its class rhetoric. Although it often talks of ‘working people’ or ‘workers’ (a populist
partes-pro-toto term), it as frequently talks of ‘the working class’. In 2015 it tried to bridge these
inconsistencies with reference to Scotland’s ‘working class majority’.88 Moreover, much of its
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
84
UKIP, UK Independence Party Manifesto 2005. WE WANT OUR COUNTRY BACK (Birmingham: UKIP,
2005).
85
UKIP, Believe in Britain. UKIP Manifesto 2015. (Newton Abbot: UKIP, 2015).
86
SSP, Scottish Socialist Party Manifesto for the 1999 Scottish Parliamentary Elections: The Socialist Road
to Holyrood (Glasgow: SSP, 1999).
87
88
SSP, The Scottish Socialist Party MANIFESTO 2001 (Glasgow: SSP, 2001).
SSP, Scottish Socialist Party 2015 General Election Manifesto. For an Independent Socialist Scotland:
Standing up for Scotland’s Working Class Majority (Edinburgh: SSP, 2015).
attention is devoted to particularist subdivisions of the Scottish people: women, the disabled, young
people, the unemployed etc., whose interests are not obviously identified with those of the people as
a whole. Indicatively, the SSP’s heartland is barely referred to: it does not openly advocate a return
to a past golden age. Where it can be gleaned, the SSP’s vision is rooted in economics: Scotland’s
‘colossal reserves of oil; a highly skilled and well-educated workforce; a rich cultural heritage; and
a talented artistic community [can] build a radical new Scotland which will stand up to the forces of
globalisation and capitalism.’89
As expected, Respect has much overlap with the SSP. However, the nuances are different.
Respect claims to be an internationalist party, and this aspect is much more developed than in the
SSP. Of all the parties, Respect is least nationalist. Respect does not acknowledge Scottish
independence, and actually spends relatively little time addressing the British people. Much of the
time that the concept of ‘people’ is invoked, this is a people far-flung: the Venezuelan, Palestinian
or Kashmiri people. This is consistent with Respect’s anti-war message and its concern to ‘stand in
solidarity with people throughout the world whose lives are blighted by war and exploitation’.90
However, when it does address the British people, the terms are classically populist: ‘Respect is the
natural home for those who feel disenfranchised and dispossessed’.91 No clear concept of
nationhood is put forward; however, on the basis of indirect inferences, Respect’s concept is civic:
it talks of ‘British citizens’ and ‘the British people.’
However, like the SSP, Respect is strongly particularist. Even though (unlike the SSP),
Respect manifestos do not mention socialism or anti-capitalism explicitly, the working-class focus
is more developed still: ‘[A] vote for Respect is a vote to reverse the rightward march in British
politics and to help create a clear, radical, working-class voice’.92 To an even greater extent than the
SSP (and indicative of its communitarian emphasis), Respect is focussed on the needs of specific
subgroups (women, pensioners, ethnic minorities and immigrants, although not LBGT groups).
Anti-elitism
No-one could deny that the BNP is an anti-establishment party. It has the most anti-elite references
of the four parties examined (7.56 percent). There are three principal targets of the BNP’s invective.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
89
SSP, The Scottish Socialist Party MANIFESTO 2001.
90
Respect, Homes, Jobs and Peace: Manifesto for a Hung Parliament (Manchester: Respect, 2010).
91
Respect, Another World Is Possible. Policies of Respect–the Unity Coalition (London: Respect, 2006).
92
Respect, Peace, Justice, Equality. The Respect Manifesto for the May 2005 Election (London: Respect,
2005).
National political elites are lambasted for their corruption, incompetence, cultural insensitivity and
alleged anti-democratic tendencies: ‘[T[he present regime and its collaborators are engaged in an
undeclared cultural war against the British people and have employed Orwellian methods of
intellectual terrorism to suppress opposition’.93 Indeed, the political elite is often portrayed as
totalitarian or ‘racist’ (since they allegedly do not understand that ethnic groups have profound
immutable differences and foist multiculturalism on the population). By far the biggest target,
however, are the European elites (and other unnamed foreigners): these control the political,
cultural and financial levers of UK policy: ‘[T]he European Union is an aspiring super state which
would deprive the British people of their right to democratic self-government; subject us to alien
rule in the interest of a bureaucracy which has no loyalty to the United Kingdom and bring about
the eventual liquidation of Britain as a nation and a people’.94 The BNP claims that ‘we love Europe
but hate the EU’ and advocates withdrawal.
However, the third main element that the BNP identifies is anti-intermediaries populism. It
attacks various bureaucrats, but above all insidious ‘political correctness’ and the ‘cult of global
warming’ which allegedly straightjacket the population and force them how to think. These are the
main prongs of the BNP’s attacks. However, the party also attacks the media’s alleged lies and lack
of democratic accountability. Moreover, a few denigratory swipes are made at economic elites,
namely (foreign) ‘corporate industrial and commercial giants’ who buy up Britain’s infrastructure
and (allegedly) its political parties.
In contrast, UKIP is barely concerned with national political elites, except when they are the
‘regional agents’ of its main enemy, Brussels. Indeed, within the UK political system, UKIP is not
an anti-establishment party at all, as reflected by the lowest anti-elite score of all the populists
(3.57). It wholeheartedly supports the traditional British political institutions (monarchy and
parliamentary sovereignty), with minor modifications to the electoral system and the neutering of
the devolved assemblies. The BNP in contrast wants an English parliament and a referendum on the
future of the monarchy. True, UKIP inveighs against the ‘old political parties’ and ‘the LibLabConsensus’ and like the BNP, pays special attention to political correctness and multiculturalism, but
the main target of its ire remains Brussels: withdrawal from the EU will mean that ‘[W]e will no
longer be governed by an undemocratic and autocratic European Union or ruled by its unelected
bureaucrats, commissioners, multiple presidents and judges’.95 Tellingly, UKIP generally devotes
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
93
BNP, Democracy, Freedom, Culture and Identity. British National Party General Elections Manifesto
2010.
94
BNP, Rebuilding British Democracy. British National Party General Election 2005 Manifesto.
95
UKIP, UKIP Manifesto April 2010. Empowering the People.
little attention to economic elites, except in 2015, perhaps with the Labour vote in mind, swiping at
multinational corporations. Its obsession with excessive bureaucracy and lack of interest in the
sources of economic power emanates from an essentially neo-liberal economic position: the party
supports a low-tax, free-trade economic agenda.
In contrast, the SSP’s anti-elitism is almost completely focussed, either directly or
indirectly, on economic elites. Certainly, there are classically populist attacks on the political elite:
the mainstream parties and the establishment: ‘[O]ur vision of the future stands out in luminous
contrast to the grey uniformity of the big political parties whose ideas are neither modern nor
original’.96 In 2010, the party sought to exploit the recent expenses scandal by fulminating against
corruption and the ‘out of touch’ politicians at Westminster.97 But for the most part, the political
elites are distrusted because of their economic policy: Scottish and UK parties are the ‘big business
parties’ funded and controlled by a ‘clique of multi-millionaire bankers’ or ‘private fatcats’.98
Above all, the SSP aims to ‘stand against the phoney consensus that asserts that the free market and
private ownership of the economy equals competence and efficiency’ and asserts that ‘most of the
key decisions that affect our everyday lives … are taken behind closed doors by bureaucrats and
business moguls’.99
Relative to UKIP and the BNP, the SSP says next to nothing about intermediaries
obsfuscating the will of the people: as in the above quote, bureaucrats are usually mentioned in the
same breath as big business, and the party has little specific against bureaucrats as such. Moreover,
although critical of the EU, the party says little about it either in Scottish manifestos (where EU
politics is hardly an issue) or UK ones, beyond a few critical marks about its allegedly procapitalist, undemocratic and anti-popular essence: it rejects ‘the naive notion that the European
Union is a benevolent institution serving the ordinary people of Europe’.100 The SSP will not
withdraw from Europe but seeks ‘a voluntary and democratic confederation of socialist states’ with
economic policy devolved from the Bank of England and European Central Bank to the people of
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
96
SSP, Scottish Socialist Party Manifesto for the 1999 Scottish Parliamentary Elections: The Socialist Road
to Holyrood.
97
SSP, ‘For an Independent Socialist Scotland No Cuts, No Wars, for an End to Corruption’ (SSP, 2010),
http://www.scottishsocialistparty.org/new_stories/election2010/ssp-mini-manifesto.html.
98
SSP, Scottish Socialist Party Manifesto for the 1999 Scottish Parliamentary Elections: The Socialist Road
to Holyrood; SSP, The Scottish Socialist Party MANIFESTO 2001.
99
SSP, The Scottish Socialist Party MANIFESTO 2001.
100
Ibid.
Scotland.101 Accordingly, in terms of our typology, the SSP’s anti-elitism is primarily focussed on
the national economic and political elite, rather than foreign elites or intermediary institutions.
Respect’s position is essentially similar, although its language is distinct, and it is still more
focused on economic issues. Although it refers to the establishment’s ‘tyranny, prejudice and…
abuse of power’ and ‘shallowness and cynicism’, particularly towards immigrants, the vast bulk of
its critique is directed towards ‘big business and the mainstream politicians who do its bidding’.102
It attacks ‘big corporations and the wealthy’, ‘the rich elite’ and the ‘cutthroat privateers’.103 Unlike
the SSP it is more concerned with foreign elites, but these are exclusively the foreign economic
elites – the multinationals, the World Trade Organisation (WTO), the International Monetary Fund
(IMF) and the World Bank. Above all, the party claims to be with the ‘millions, not the
millionaires’.104
Like the SSP, Respect has nothing to say about bureaucratic or other intermediaries, and
little to say about the EU, except in passing. Similarly, Respect claims to support Europe, but is
against the current EU, which is ‘dominated by big business interests’. The abortive EU constitution
is decried for its anti-working class character and for transferring power from elected parliaments to
unelected bureaucracies.105 All in all, the foreign elite invective makes Respect more anti-elitist
than the SSP, yet marginally so since much critique is couched in more classically class-based and
less genuinely populist language.
Popular sovereignty
The BNP says much about popular sovereignty, both in the abstract and the specific: in general its
view of popular sovereignty is inevitably tied up with its nationalism: ‘ensuring British people have
a homeland, national self-sufficiency’.106 In addition, the party stands for more open, nonbureaucratic government that is closer to the people. It also has a lot of specific democratic
proposals including the introduction of ‘Citizens’ Initiative Referenda on the Swiss model’ to
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
101
Ibid.
102
Respect, Peace, Justice, Equality. The Respect Manifesto for the May 2005 Election.
103
Ibid.; Coalition Against Cuts, ‘Vote George Galloway – Coalition Against Cuts Manifesto’ (Coalition
Against Cuts, 2011), http://www.votegeorgegalloway.com/2011/04/vote-george-galloway-coalitionagainst.html.
104
Coalition Against Cuts, ‘Vote George Galloway – Coalition Against Cuts Manifesto’.
105
Respect, Peace, Justice, Equality. The Respect Manifesto for the May 2005 Election.
106
BNP, Rebuilding British Democracy. British National Party General Election 2005 Manifesto.
provide ‘a vital check and balance on the political class’.107 In addition, the party proposed a ‘Back
us or sack us!’ contract, whereby if the electorate could gather signatures to sack poorly-performing
BNP representatives after 12 months in office.108 Furthermore, the party offers many initiatives that
look democratic, even liberal, such as the rejection of ID-cards, local devolution and referenda, as
well as laws to protect opposition and oppose political violence.
But the BNP’s proposals are not confined to politics: a large proportion of the manifestos is
concerned with economic sovereignty, or what the BNP calls ‘economic nationalism’. This involves
state control of strategic sectors of the economy (including re-nationalisation if necessary).
Principally, this entails the protection of the welfare state and ‘free, fully funded National Health
Service for all British citizens’, but also involves commitments to full employment and labour
protection.109 This might begin to look rather inclusive (indeed the BNP is committed to creating’ a
society of ‘stakeholders’ and a representative popular democracy’).110 However, the BNP makes
clear the limits to these rights: new jobs are for ‘native Britons’, the health service is for ‘British
citizens’, foreign workers are to be removed from the NHS and above all there will be ‘a halt to all
further non-white immigration, the immediate deportation of criminal and illegal immigrants, and
the introduction of a system of voluntary resettlement whereby those non-white immigrants who are
legally here will be encouraged, but not compelled, to return to their lands of ethnic origin’.111
UKIP’s version of popular sovereignty has strong similarities, although it is notably less
draconian and authoritarian, as well as being less detailed (indeed, UKIP’s vision is more abstract
than the BNP’s): there is an emphasis on national-self sufficiency: withdrawal from the EU will
enable the UK government to operate with freedom and flexibility to support its national interests
(although in contrast to the BNP’s isolationist vision, UKIP will stay engaged with NATO and seek
to expand foreign trade contacts). UKIP also places great emphasis on popular referenda,
transparent non-bureaucratic governance and localism, indeed it claims to want to ‘give meaningful
power back to the British people and not just talk of localism’.112 Such new powers include ‘local
referendums on any major local issue’ and ‘more visible decision-making processes’ for local
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
107
Ibid.
108
BNP, BNP Scotland Manifesto. Freedom: The Manifesto of the British National Party.
109
BNP, ‘Where We Stand!’ (BNP, 2001), http://www.politicsresources.net/area/uk/e01/man/bnpstand.htm.
110
BNP, The Voice Of Ordinary People. British National Party Scotland General Election Manifesto 2011
(Turriff: BNP, 2011).
111
BNP, ‘Where We Stand!’.
112
UKIP, UK Independence Party Manifesto 2005. WE WANT OUR COUNTRY BACK.
governments’.113 There will be ‘binding national referenda on controversial public law and order
issues that are outside party politics’, and elected health and police boards. In contrast to the BNP,
and consistent with its neo-liberal economic position, UKIP says almost nothing about restoring
economic sovereignty, beyond 2015 pledges for extra funding for an NHS free at the point of use,
saving money and increasing economic opportunities by repatriating powers from Brussels.
Again, lest this begin to look like an inclusive version of popular sovereignty, UKIP makes it clear
that its vision applies primarily to British citizens. It would limit immigration, in 2015 by an
Australian-style points based visa system and moratorium on unskilled immigration. Full NHS
access would be reserved to those with a permanent right to remain who have paid UK taxes for
five years: ‘[T]he NHS is the National Health Service, not the International Health Service.’114
The contrast with the SSP could not be clearer. There are certain similarities, particularly in
and an emphasis on national sovereignty: the SSP ‘believes that Scotland is a nation and has the
right to control its own economy, its own welfare system and its own defence policy’.115 Moreover,
the SSP makes emphases (although vague) on local democratic control. However, this is achieved
less through referenda than through empowering communities: ‘[S]chools to be turned into wider
community facilities, providing adult education and cultural activities in the evenings and at
weekends’.116
Relative to the BNP and UKIP, there are almost no references to sovereignty in the abstract.
Indeed, almost all references refer to returning economic control to the Scottish people. It is not that
the SSP does not have political proposals (for example the abolition of the monarchy), just that
these are not put in explicitly populist terms and are drowned out by the economic arguments. For
example, the SSP supports ‘extension of public ownership to include other key sectors of the
economy including North Sea oil, the big banks and financial institutions, and the major
construction, transport, and manufacturing companies’.117 More specifically, the party advocates ‘a
new democratically-run NHS in which representatives of the medical profession, health workers
and local communities are involved in planning healthcare provision…the transfer into community
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
113
UKIP, Manifesto: Scottish Parliament and Local Elections 3 May 2007. Sack the MSPs, Restore
Democracy Anc Leave the EU (Dalgety Bay: UKIP Scotland, 2007).
114
UKIP, Believe in Britain. UKIP Manifesto 2015.
115
SSP, The Scottish Socialist Party MANIFESTO 2001.
116
Ibid.
117
Ibid.
and public ownership [of] all unoccupied and unutilised land’ and ‘a publicly-owned and
democratically-run rail, bus and ferry system’.118
Moreover, in stark contrast to the aforementioned parties, the vision of the Scottish people is
demonstrably inclusive: ‘[T]he SSP is striving to build a tolerant socialist society in which racism,
sectarianism, homophobia, ageism and discrimination against women, disabled people have no
place’.119 The party manifestos have several sections that advocate an open-borders policy towards
asylum seekers and immigrants. In addition, while the party makes a key part of its appeal to the
poor, disadvantaged, and the working class, it also aims to reach ‘the hearts and … minds of those
… a little bit better off financially … professional workers … home owners … those who have
escaped the housing schemes, the dead end jobs and the dole queues’.120
In most significant aspects, Respect is similar, although its emphases are different. It has a
still greater accent on inclusion towards minorities and migrants in a multiracial society, but a
similar emphasis on economic sovereignty to the exclusion of political sovereignty. Again, its focus
on political sovereignty is somewhat vague and fragmentary (e.g. ‘[E]ncouraging the full
participation of all communities in the political process’).121 It has only three specific political
proposals: ‘[T]he radical democratisation of our constitution with a fair proportional voting system,
abolition of the appointed House of Lords and cleaning up parliament’.122 The party does say more
about abstract sovereignty than the SSP, as it argues for ‘[T]he organisation of society in the most
open, democratic, participative, and accountable way practicable based on common ownership and
democratic control’.123 However, in most significant ways, the view of sovereignty is similarly
focussed on economic issues: the ideal is that ‘public services should be publicly owned and
democratically controlled by those who use them and those who work in them’.124 This means
greater public ownership of ‘key sectors of the economy’ including transport, water, gas and
electricity services and a commitment to a ‘fully-funded, publicly-owned NHS, delivering care free
at the point of use’.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
118
SSP, Scottish Socialist Party Manifesto for the 1999 Scottish Parliamentary Elections: The Socialist Road
to Holyrood.
119
SSP, The Scottish Socialist Party MANIFESTO 2001.
120
SSP, Scottish Socialist Party Manifesto for the 1999 Scottish Parliamentary Elections: The Socialist Road
to Holyrood.
121
Respect, Homes, Jobs and Peace: Manifesto for a Hung Parliament.
122
Ibid.
123
Respect, Peace, Justice, Equality. The Respect Manifesto for the May 2005 Election.
124
Ibid.
Conclusions: Similar after all?
We can now typologise these parties in terms of the aforementioned criteria; ultimately there are
significant similarities and differences among the parties (Table 4). The BNP is the only party to
have an ethnic nationalist and collectivist view of the people. Neither the SSP nor Respect focuses
on intermediaries in their anti-elitism. Only the SSP does not focus on a foreign elite, and only
UKIP does not focus on an economic elite. In terms of popular sovereignty, all but the SSP focus on
abstract as well as specific sovereignty. All but UKIP address economic sovereignty. The BNP’s
and UKIP’s view of popular sovereignty is primarily exclusionary (although markedly more so in
the case of the BNP; UKIP is more ambiguous), the SSP’s and Respect’s is more inclusionary.
How do these typologies help identify the primary differences between left-wing and rightwing populism? On one hand, there is clearly no absolute dichotomy between left and right-wing
variants. They are not polar opposites and share several attributes. On first view, this appears to
corroborate the populism-trumps-ideology view that differences between left-and right-wing
populism are less of kind than degree. Where, then, does this leave the ideology-trumps-populism
thesis? We can take each of Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser’s three criteria for examining left and
right-wing populism in turn.
First, is right-wing populism more focussed on ethnic identity than socio-economic issues?
Broadly speaking this is true, but with caveats. At one end of the scale, the BNP is clearly a nativist
party, with its populism replete with appeals for the preservation of ethnic and cultural
homogeneity, national isolationism and ethnic (implicitly racial) purity. However, it does have a
strongly economic element to its populism: economic protectionism and state ownership, and it also
attacks economic elites. This economic emphasis is a principal reason why Clark et al. observe
fundamental similarities between left and right-populism.
Certainly the SSP and Respect’s focus is primarily on the economic depravations of the
people, and their economic vision is similarly focussed on the virtues of public ownership. They too
attack globalisation and the EU, albeit less stridently. However, there is still a fundamental
difference: not only is their critique devoid of cultural complaints, but it is universalist and not
national-isolationist. The BNP defends the indigenous people and the white working class, and
provides welfare rights only to them: archetypal welfare chauvinism. Respect and the SSP’s view is
internationalist (seeing ‘the people’ as part of a global community). Most significantly of all, these
cases corroborate the issue identified by Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser and ignored by Clark et al.:
that left-wing populism does not ignore ethnic issues but is predominately focussed on socio-
Table 4: Typologies of Populism
Party
People-centrism
Ethnic
BNP
Civic
X
Anti-elitism
Collectivist
Particularist
X
Popular sovereignty
Political
Economic
Foreign
Intermediaries
Abstract
Political
Economic
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
UKIP
X
X
X
SSP
X
X
X
X
Respect
X
X
X
X
X
X
Inclusive
Exclusive
X
X
X
X
X
X
!
economic issues and above all economic egalitarianism. Both the SSP and Respect do take account
of ethnic issues (SSP by support for Scottish independence, Respect by its support for the
multiracial society), but both place consistent emphasis on equality. In contrast, the BNP rejects
equality as a ‘politically correct’ Marxist dogma that ignores the supposed reality of fundamental
individual and cultural differences. UKIP says relatively little about economics (it does not criticise
economic elites and is not concerned with economic sovereignty). However, this emphasis clearly
emerges from its neo-liberal economic position; hence its opposition to bureaucratic interference,
preference for tax reduction and (implicit) criticism of state intervention in the economy. With its
preference for flat-taxes, UKIP also declares itself to be anti-egalitarian.
Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser’s second point was that right-wing populism is primarily
exclusionary while left-wing populism is primarily inclusionary. This division is largely borne out
by this analysis, even though no form of popular sovereignty is completely exclusionary or
inclusionary. For example, both the BNP and UKIP call for a radical devolution of power to the
people that looks inclusionary, but seek significant restrictions on immigration. Certainly the BNP’s
vision: isolationist, authoritarian, and motivated by a purist view of the nation is least inclusionary
of all. UKIP’s, with an assimilationist but vague notion of Britishness and equally vague antiimmigrant policies is far less exclusionary (at least to the British people, although it barely
acknowledges the rights of the Scots and Welsh). On the other hand, its ideas of popular
sovereignty are relatively weak because of all the parties here it is least anti-establishment, and its
idea of people’s power mainly implies the UK’s freedom from the EU, increased localism and
marginal tinkering with the Westminster electoral system.
In contrast, both the SSP and Respect make repeated declarations of their internationalism
and lambast the attacks on immigrants and minorities that they observe in establishment policies
and those of the extreme right. However, their celebratory inclusiveness should not necessarily be
taken at face value. Clark et al. note that Respect has few specific proposals for improving the
democratic rights of the people, a fact that undermines its ostensibly left-libertarian emphasis;
moreover its proposals for greater economic control are poorly defined: greater ‘public’ control of
the economy can entail the greater state dirigisme of a planned economy that is far from inclusive.
In addition, Respect has been criticised for its alleged inattention to gender and sexual minority
concerns.125 Similar criticisms about economic dirigisme can be addressed to the SSP, although it is
more libertarian, particularly in its support for the environment and LBGT rights.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
125
E.g. Benjamin Cohen, ‘“What Was the Right Answer for the Question?” George Galloway and Gay
Rights’, PinkNews, 21 February 2006, http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2006/02/21/what-was-the-right-answerfor-the-question-george-galloway-and-gay-rights/.
!
Moreover, Table 4 showed that the ‘popular sovereignty’ scores for the two left-wing
populists are (marginally) lower than those for the right-wing populists. There are three main
reasons for this: 1) as mentioned, and consistent with classic Marxist reasoning, the left-populists
give scant attention to issues of political democracy separate from popular economic control; 2)
relatedly, many of the left-populists’ arguments for greater public control are not couched in
populist terms. For example, a prevalent argument made by both parties for the extension of public
ownership is the divisive and exploitative nature of private ownership and the market – a classically
socialist not populist argument; 3) finally, many of the arguments for greater democracy are made
in the name of sectoral groups within the population rather than the people as a whole; be they the
homeless, the disabled or the working class. Again, these could not be coded as populist arguments.
Overall, this means that the left-populists should be seen as less inclusionary than they
claim, but clearly still more inclusionary than the right-wing populists; after all they respect
minority rights, diversity and the principle of reconciliation between divergent interests to a far
greater degree, and do not (openly at least) promote coercive measures towards outgroups (except,
obviously, the elite).
Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser’s third point that populism is less important than nativism in
the ideology of the populist right and that left-wing populists are populists first and socialists
second is not borne out: conversely the right-wing populists are markedly more populist than leftpopulists, in their overall score and their emphasis on people-centrism in particular. Both left-wing
populists have a marked socialist slant (explicitly so in the case of the SSP). Although they are
replete with populist discourse, they meld this with traditional socialist concerns such as
egalitarianism, the primacy of public ownership, internationalism and the rights of the working
class and the impoverished, rather than the people as a whole. These parties are socialists first and
populists second, as befits March’s depiction of them as populist socialist parties.
How then to reconcile these findings? The populism-trumps ideology thesis rightly observes
marked similarities between left-and-right populists: however, these cases do not support the
contention that the similarities are as significant as the differences. This supports the first two of
Mudde and Kaltwasser’s propositions. The fact that the third one is not borne out does not refute
the substance of their views, but merely the (regionally-specific) emphasis. They argue that the key
differences between left-and right-populism are borne out of the host-ideology. I would go further
and argue that the host-ideology is all-important in the nature of party populism and is vital in
explaining the key similarities and differences between left-and right-wing populists and the
nuances in parties of each genus. Approaches which focus on the ‘threat’ of populism without
taking into account the host ideology risk reifying populism and distorting the real nature of that
threat.
!
Bibliography
Abedi, Amir, and Thomas Carl Lundberg. ‘Doomed to Failure? UKIP and the Organisational
Challenges Facing Right-Wing Populist Anti-Political Establishment Parties’.
Parliamentary Affairs 62, no. 1 (2009): 72–87.
Albertazzi, Daniele, and Duncan McDonnell, eds. Twenty-First Century Populism: The Spectre of
Western European Democracy. Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.
Arditi, Benjamin. ‘Populism, Or, Politics at the Edges of Democracy’. Contemporary Politics 9, no.
1 (2003): 17–31. 6.
Bale, Tim, Stijn van Kessel, and Bryan T. McGraw. ‘Thrown around with Abandon? Popular
Understandings of Populism as Conveyed by the Print Media: A UK Case Study’. Acta
Politica 46, no. 2 (2011): 111–31. .
Beasley-Murray, Jon. Posthegemony: Political Theory and Latin America. Minneapolis: University
of Minnesota Press, 2010.
Betz, Hans-Georg. ‘Conditions Favouring the Success and Failure of Radical Right-Wing Populist
Parties in Contemporary Democracies’. In Democracies and the Populist Challenge, edited
by Y. Mény and Y. Surel, 197–213. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002.
BNP. BNP Scotland Manifesto. Freedom: The Manifesto of the British National Party. Glasgow:
BNP Scotland, 2003.
———. Democracy, Freedom, Culture and Identity. British National Party General Elections
Manifesto 2010. Welshpool: BNP, 2010.
———. Rebuilding British Democracy. British National Party General Election 2005 Manifesto.
Welshpool: BNP, 2005.
———. The Voice Of Ordinary People. British National Party Scotland General Election
Manifesto 2011. Turriff: BNP, 2011.
———. ‘Where We Stand!’. BNP, 2001.
http://www.politicsresources.net/area/uk/e01/man/bnpstand.htm.
Cameron, Maxwell A. ‘Latin America’s Left Turns: Beyond Good and Bad’. Third World
Quarterly 30, no. 2 (2009): 331–48. .
Canovan, Margaret. Populism. Junction Books, London, 1981.
———. ‘Taking Politics to the People: Populism as the Ideology of Democracy’. In Democracies
and the Populist Challenge, edited by Y. Mény and Y. Surel, 25–42. Basingstoke: Palgrave,
2002.
———. ‘Trust the People! Populism and the Two Faces of Democracy’. Political Studies 47, no. 1
(1999): 2–16.
Clark, Alistair, Karin Bottom, and Colin Copus. ‘More Similar Than They’d Like to Admit?
Ideology, Policy and Populism in the Trajectories of the British National Party and Respect’.
British Politics 3, no. 4 (2008): 511–34. .
Coalition Against Cuts. ‘Vote George Galloway – Coalition Against Cuts Manifesto’. Coalition
Against Cuts, 2011. http://www.votegeorgegalloway.com/2011/04/vote-george-gallowaycoalition-against.html.
Cohen, Benjamin. ‘“What Was the Right Answer for the Question?” George Galloway and Gay
Rights’. PinkNews, 21 February 2006. http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2006/02/21/what-wasthe-right-answer-for-the-question-george-galloway-and-gay-rights/.
Collins, Jennifer N. ‘New Left Experiences in Bolivia and Ecuador and the Challenge to Theories
of Populism’. Journal of Latin American Studies 46, no. 1 (2014): 59–86.
Conservatives. Invitation to Join the Government of Britain. The Conservative Manifesto 2010.
London: The Conservative Party, 2010.
Cuperus, R. ‘The Populist Deficiency of European Social Democracy’. Internationale Politik Und
Gesellschaft 3 (2003): 83–109.
!
Deegan-Krause, Kevin, and Tim Haughton. ‘Toward a More Useful Conceptualization of Populism:
Types and Degrees of Populist Appeals in the Case of Slovakia’. Politics & Policy 37, no. 4
(2009): 821–41. .
De Raadt, Jasper, David Hollanders, and André Krouwel. Varieties of Populism: An Analysis of the
Programmatic Character of Six European Parties. Working Papers Political Science.
Amsterdam: Vrije Universiteit, 2004.
De Vries, Catherine E, and Erica E Edwards. ‘Taking Europe To Its Extremes’. Party Politics 15,
no. 1 (2009): 5–28.
Fella, Stefano, and Carlo Ruzza. Re-Inventing the Italian Right: Territorial Politics, Populism and
‘Post-Fascism’. 1st ed. Routledge, 2009.
Fieschi, Catherine. ‘Introduction’. Journal of Political Ideologies 9, no. 3 (2004): 235–40.
Fieschi, Catherine, and Paul Heywood. ‘Trust, Cynicism and Populist Anti-politics’. Journal of
Political Ideologies 9, no. 3 (2004): 289–309.
Freeden, Michael. ‘Is Nationalism a Distinct Ideology?’. Political Studies 46, no. 4 (1998): 748–65.
Freedland, Jonathan. ‘Behold, Ed Miliband’s New Populism of the Left’. The Guardian, 24
September 2013. http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/24/ed-milibandleftwing-positions-brighton-speech.
Fukuyama, Francis. ‘“Where Is the Uprising from the Left?”.’ Spiegel Online, 1 February 2012,
sec. World. http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,812208,00.html.
Hancox, Dan. ‘Why Ernesto Laclau Is the Intellectual Figurehead for Syriza and Podemos’. The
Guardian, 9 February 2015.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/feb/09/ernesto-laclau-intellectualfigurehead-syriza-podemos.
Hawkins, Kirk A. ‘Is Chávez Populist? Measuring Populist Discourse in Comparative Perspective’.
Comparative Political Studies 42, no. 8 (2009): 1040–67.
Ignazi, Piero. ‘The Silent Counter-Revolution. Hypotheses on the Emergence of Extreme RightWing Parties in Europe’. European Journal of Political Research 22, no. 1 (1992): 3–34.
Jagers, J., and S. Walgrave. ‘Populism as Political Communication Style: An Empirical Study of
Political Parties’ Discourse in Belgium’. European Journal of Political Research 46, no. 3
(2007).
Jones, Owen. ‘How Ed Miliband Can Harness the Right’s Tactics to Bring in a Wave of Left-Wing
Populism in 2014’. The Independent, 1 January 2014.
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/how-ed-miliband-can-harness-the-rightstactics-to-bring-in-a-wave-of-leftwing-populism-in-2014-9032903.html.
Keith, Dan. ‘Ready to Get Their Hands Dirty. The Socialist Party and GroenLinks in the
Netherlands’. In Left Parties in National Governments, edited by Jonathan Olsen, M. Koß,
and Dan Hough, 155–72. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2010.
Labour. Britain Can Be Better. The Labour Party Manifesto 2015. London: The Labour Party,
2015.
Laruelle, Marlène. Rodina: Les Mouvances Nationalists Russes Du Loyalisme À L’opposition.
CERI-Sciences Po, 2006. www.ceri-sciencespo.com/archive/mai06/artml.pdf.
Lyrintzis, Christos. ‘The Changing Party System: Stable Democracy, Contested “Modernisation”.’
West European Politics 28, no. 2 (2005): 242–59.
Mair, Peter. ‘Populist Democracy vs. Party Democracy’. In Democracies and the Populist
Challenge, edited by Y. Mény and Y. Surel, 81–98. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002.
March, Luke. ‘From Vanguard of the Proletariat to Vox Populi: Left-Populism as a “Shadow” of
Contemporary Socialism’. SAIS Review 27, no. 1 (2007): 63–77.
———. Radical Left Parties in Contemporary Europe. 1st ed. Routledge, 2011.
March, Luke, and Cas Mudde. ‘“What”s Left of the Radical Left? The European Radical Left after
1989: Decline and Mutation’. Comparative European Politics 3 (2005): 23–49.
!
Mény, Y., and Y. Surel. ‘The Constitutive Ambiguity of Populism’. In Democracies and the
Populist Challenge, edited by Y. Mény and Y. Surel, 1–21. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002.
Mudde, Cas. ‘Extremist Movements’. In Developments in West European Politics 2, edited by Paul
Heywood, E. Jones, and M. Rhodes, 135–48. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002.
———. Populist Radical Right Parties in Europe. 1st ed. Cambridge University Press, 2007.
———. ‘The Populist Zeitgeist’. Government and Opposition 39, no. 4 (2004).
Mudde, Cas, and Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser. ‘Exclusionary vs. Inclusionary Populism:
Comparing Contemporary Europe and Latin America’. Government and Opposition 48, no.
02 (2013): 147–74. .
———. , eds. Populism in Europe and the Americas: Threat or Corrective for Democracy?. 1st ed.
Cambridge University Press, 2012.
———. Voices of the Peoples: Populism in Europe and Latin America Compared. Working Paper.
Kellogg Institute, 2011.
Panizza, F. ‘Introduction: Populism and the Mirror of Democracy’. In Populism and the Mirror of
Democracy, edited by F. Panizza, 1–31. London: Verso, 2005.
Pappas, Takis S. Populism and Crisis Politics in Greece. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2014.
http://www.palgrave.com%2Fpage%2Fdetail%2Fpopulism-and-crisis-politics-in-greecetakis-s-pappas%2F%3FK%3D9781137410573.
Pauwels, Teun. ‘Measuring Populism: A Quantitative Text Analysis of Party Literature in
Belgium’. Journal of Elections, Public Opinion & Parties 21, no. 1 (2011): 97–119.
Respect. Another World Is Possible. Policies of Respect–the Unity Coalition. London: Respect,
2006.
———. Homes, Jobs and Peace: Manifesto for a Hung Parliament. Manchester: Respect, 2010.
———. Peace, Justice, Equality. The Respect Manifesto for the May 2005 Election. London:
Respect, 2005.
Reungoat, Emmanuelle. ‘Anti-EU Parties and the People: An Analysis of Populism in French
Euromanifestos’. Perspectives on European Politics and Society 11, no. 3 (2010): 292–312.
.
Rooduijn, Matthijs. ‘The Nucleus of Populism: In Search of the Lowest Common Denominator’.
Government and Opposition 49, no. 04 (2014): 573–99. .
Rooduijn, Matthijs, and Teun Pauwels. ‘Measuring Populism: Comparing Two Methods of Content
Analysis’. West European Politics 34, no. 6 (2011): 1272–83.
Rooduijn, M., S.L. de Lange, and W. van der Brug. ‘A Populist Zeitgeist? Has Populism Become
Mainstream in Western Europe (1988-2008)?’. Reykjavik, 2011.
Rooduijn, M., and Teun Pauwels. ‘Measuring Populism in Comparative Research Two Content
Analysis Methods Compared’. Leuven, 2010.
SSP. ‘For an Independent Socialist Scotland No Cuts, No Wars, for an End to Corruption’. SSP,
2010. http://www.scottishsocialistparty.org/new_stories/election2010/ssp-minimanifesto.html.
———. Scottish Socialist Party 2015 General Election Manifesto. For an Independent Socialist
Scotland: Standing up for Scotland’s Working Class Majority. Edinburgh: SSP, 2015.
———. Scottish Socialist Party Manifesto for the 1999 Scottish Parliamentary Elections: The
Socialist Road to Holyrood. Glasgow: SSP, 1999.
———. The Scottish Socialist Party MANIFESTO 2001. Glasgow: SSP, 2001.
Stanley, Ben. ‘The Thin Ideology of Populism’. Journal of Political Ideologies 13, no. 1 (2008):
95–110.
Stavrakakis, Yannis, and Giorgos Katsambekis. ‘Left-Wing Populism in the European Periphery:
The Case of SYRIZA’. Journal of Political Ideologies 19, no. 2 (2014): 119–42.
Taggart, Paul. Populism. 1st ed. Open University Press, 2000.
———. ‘Populism and Representative Politics in Contemporary Europe’. Journal of Political
Ideologies 9, no. 3 (2004): 269–88.
!
Tekdemir, Omer. ‘Is a Socialist EU Possible via Left-Wing Populist Parties such as Syriza,
Podemos and the HDP?’. openDemocracy, 20 February 2015.
https://www.opendemocracy.net/can-europe-make-it/omer-tekdemir/is-socialist-eu-possiblevia-leftwing-populist-parties-such-as-syri.
UKIP. Believe in Britain. UKIP Manifesto 2015. Newton Abbot: UKIP, 2015.
———. Manifesto: Scottish Parliament and Local Elections 3 May 2007. Sack the MSPs, Restore
Democracy Anc Leave the EU. Dalgety Bay: UKIP Scotland, 2007.
———. Say No to the European Union. UK Independence Party European Elections Manifesto
June 2004. Birmingham: UKIP, 2004.
———. UK Independence Party Manifesto 2005. WE WANT OUR COUNTRY BACK.
Birmingham: UKIP, 2005.
———. UKIP Manifesto April 2010. Empowering the People. Newton Abbot: UKIP, 2010.
Van Kessel, Stijn. Populist Parties in Europe. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2015.
Vossen, Koen. ‘Populism in the Netherlands after Fortuyn: Rita Verdonk and Geert Wilders
Compared’. Perspectives on European Politics and Society 11, no. 1 (2010): 22–38.
Werner, Annika, Onawa Lacewell, and Andrea Volkens. ‘Manifesto Coding Instructions (4th Fully
Revised Edition)’. In The Manifesto Data Collection. Manifesto Project
(MRG/CMP/MARPOR), by Andrea Volkens, Onawa Lacewell, Pola Lehmann, Sven Regel,
Henrike Schultze, and Annika Werner. Berlin: Berlin: Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für
Sozialforschung (WZB), 2011. https://manifesto-project.wzb.eu/.
Weyland, Kurt. ‘Clarifying a Contested Concept: Populism in the Study of Latin American
Politics’. Comparative Politics 34, no. 1 (2001): 1–22.
!
Appendix
Ideological
factor
Index
Meaning
Populist phrases
Non-populist phrases
‘Pure
people’
Peoplecentrism
Positive valorisation of
homogenous people
The people, our people, our citizens, our
country, our values, the/our community, our
nation, we, the ordinary person, our society,
all/each/everyone of us, everyone, working
people, the British/Scots etc, the average
person/family, common sense (of ordinary
people), mainstream majority, our (when
referring to something owned by the people as a
whole (‘our countryside’), but not when it refers
to a subgroup of the people itself (‘our
communities/bankers’)
The nation (implying that nationalism is the core ideological
concept), the country (where there is no specific identification
with country), other such terms where they are not directly
identified with a people (e.g. Britain, the society),
communities (where this implies regional subdivisions),
negative references to the people, focus on interests of
subgroups of people (e.g. pensioners, workers) where these
are not seen as representative of people as a whole even when
the focus is on our pensioners, our workers etc, we where it
refers to party interest/programme and not interests of broader
people, phrases such as ‘people and businesses’ where
implicitly the interests of the people are not homogeneous
‘Corrupt
elite’
Anti-elitism
Negative valorisation of
homogenous elite
The elite(s), the establishment, those in charge,
those in power, political class/caste, old parties,
the oligarchy, professional politicians, the
authorities, partocracy, the State, the
mainstream parties, the regime, them.
Arguments against the elite will often
counterpose them against the virtuous people.
In this case the people-centrism argument is
also made, but the argument should be coded
only once under anti-elitism
Criticism of specific persons or parties when not implicitly or
explicitly seen as representative of elite as a whole, positive
references to elites, any reference to heterogeneity in elite,
elite seen as pragmatic and compromise possible
Volonté
générale
Popular
sovereignty
Calling for ‘power to the
people’: greater popular
involvement, control or
participation,
greater
democracy or unfettered
leadership to further
popular involvement
Popular sovereignty: referenda, direct
democracy, power, sovereignty, independence,
others, us, them, public control/ownership,
power to people, self-government. Popular
sovereignty necessarily implies a conception of
the people. In this case the people-centrism
argument is also made, but the argument
should be coded only once under popular
sovereignty
The quasi-sentence does not refer to popular sovereignty, or if
it does, it 1) refers to it either negatively or in neutral terms; 2)
highlights the success of existing democratic mechanisms or
3) reaffirms the elite and institutional status quo